king and lionheart
by trebleclef2011
Summary: "What do you want with us?" Mako says, looking at Tenzin defensively, one arm clutched tightly around Bolin, who buries his small face in Mako's shoulder, frightened. "I want to give you a home," Tenzin says. Medieval AU; written for makorra week 2012.


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I. origin

When Mako is five years old, his parents tell him the legend of the Avatar, the great leader and warrior of the world who had saved it in an endless chain of lifetimes, and how he had saved it before from the tyrant governor of the province of fire. He watches his parents alongside his younger brother, who is three and unable to pay attention, as they tell the tale of Aang. They told him that Aang had died one year after he was born, and that the next great king of their kingdom's capital would be the next Avatar, and that he (or she) would be discovered based on their bending skill.

Bolin sleeps through the story, but when Mako lays his head down for the night, he can't stop thinking about it.

He discovers his own bending abilities one year later.

Two years after that, in their childhood home, he loses his parents to an inexplicable fire in their house. That's how it's explained away, though the almost red eyes of their murderer haunt his dreams from that night on.

The boys live and fight with their bending, learning to use weapons too, and how to forge their own armor, because no one would do it for them...these street boys who have nowhere to go. Bolin hones his earthbending skill, even able to locate metals within the earth that they can use to make weapons, which they sell on the black market to get money to survive. They traverse the countryside alone, with only each other to trust, until they fight their way into the bustling capital of the kingdom - where they use their skills, both in fighting and in weaponry - to earn their places. They're still on the streets when they are discovered by the city officials.

Mako thinks they're going to separate them, to take Bolin away where he'll never see him again. That's the first time he bends lightning.

And that's also the first time anyone treats them as if they are worth something.

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Korra is found in the icy terrain of the southern continent, the only child of her parents, who agree to move with their daughter to the capital of the kingdom, along with her pet polarbear dog, a beast no one but the tiny Avatar has been able to train in all of history. She is to be trained in the bending disciplines and other fighting styles, as well as learning to control her spirituality, before debuting as the official queen of the land.

As soon as she understands what "queen" is usually meant to be, she rejects it outright.

"I am not anyone's property!" she yells at the age of nine. "You will address me as Avatar, or King, or Korra. No other names!"

Though she had origins in the water tribes, her fiery personality is evident from the moment she arrives in the capital.

She meets her advisors, most of them members of a secret organization which had been searching for her for years upon years after the death of her predecessor, upon her arrival, her favorite of which is Katara, a master of the waterbending discipline.

She meets Tenzin a few months after her declaration about her title, and after that, she meets two more people.

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II. meeting

Tenzin studies the two young boys in front of him. The older of the two is ten, and obviously a firebender - based on that astounding display of lightning, he wonders how he hasn't been snatched up by a rogue clan looking for a fighter to exploit. The younger is eight, and a very good earthbender for his young age...even able to detect metal within the earth, a skill known only to those who had trained with the first metalbender or her daughter, who he knows personally. They trained the earthbending knights, who protect the kingdom from those who would harm its people...and taught them to bend metal, rendering the weapons of their enemies worthless.

Tenzin lowers himself to the height of the older boy, to whom his brother clutches in fear of the tall man in orange robes. He is an advisor to the king, as Korra has determined herself to be, and has been looking for talented benders to challenge the young Avatar in mock battles, preparing her for the sort of dangers she may face in the future.

He recognizes the children as some of the most talented young benders he has ever met.

"Hello," he says, trapping his hands as he looks at the trembling pair of boys, their faces smudged and fingernails dirty and cracked from living alone.

"What do you want with us?" Mako says, looking at Tenzin defensively, one arm clutched tightly around Bolin, who buries his small face in Mako's shoulder, frightened.

"I want to give you a home," Tenzin says, trying to hold in his pity for these two boys.

"You can't give us a home," Mako spits. "Our home was burned to the ground! Along with everything that mattered to us."

"I can't give you a home," Tenzin amends, "but I can give you a place to stay. And also," he adds, making sure to be clear, "I can find bending masters for both of you."

Mako drops his clenched fist, his face softening from its deadly grimace. He looks down at Bolin, who looks up hopefully at Mako, then Tenzin, and back to Mako again.

"Fine," Mako says finally.

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Korra wanders the stone palace she and her parents had been given to live in. She trains every day with Tenzin, her advisor, Katara, and her other bending masters to become better and better at being the Avatar. She has yet to master Earth, Fire, and Air, but Water was within her grasp earlier that year. She looks around at everything, the palace enormous and not fully explored, though she had been living here at least four years already.

The relics within the palace suggest that it had once been home to a previous Avatar. It is completely landlocked on all sides, which Korra and Tenzin hate...though the lake in the meadow a few miles away provides some comfort.

Korra trains incessantly...usually until Master Katara speaks out against it to the leaders of the organization, giving Korra some free time. Her free time doesn't even count for much anymore...she loves bending so much that she spends all of her free time firebending or riding through the countryside with Naga.

In the middle of a training session, she is bombarded with introductions to two boys...one a year older, and one a year younger than herself. She learns that the elder is a firebender, and the younger an earthbender.

"Hi!" she says, pushing her hand into Mako's space for a handshake. "I'm Korra!"

"You're the Avatar?" he shakes it, not too rough, but not gently enough to make her think he's a sissy or something.

"Yup!" she goes back to firebending for a few seconds, working on a fan trick she'd seen Master Mushi do once, before turning back to them.

"What's your name?"

"Uh," he says, fumbling, "It's Mako."

"Nice to meet you," she says, smiling wide, like his name is the most joyous thing. "And who is this?"

"Bolin," his brother says, smiling wide back at her.

"Nice to meet youuuu!" she says again.

They stand there, all looking at each other as Mako stands, unmoving, and Bolin shuffles his feet. Korra becomes bored with the silence and begins to bend earth, then water, and fire again. That's proof enough.

When Korra grabs his hand, pulling him into a dirt square in the center of the courtyard where she's practicing, his breath leaves his body. He stands there, unaware of how to respond.

"So," Korra says, bending at the knees and raising her hands to him. "Wanna spar?"

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III. loyalty

At the age of fifteen, Korra decides that the palace is too small a place for the king of an entire people. She goes out into the world, full of naiveté and filled with wonder at the place she's been ruling.

Of course, she brings along Mako and Bolin, her best friends from childhood who she'd trust with anything, whose knowledge of armor and weapons and bending skill makes them indispensable companions.

Traveling around, Korra visits the various bending provinces, including the Fire Province, which was governed by a reasonable and sensible woman around Tenzin's age, appointed after her aging father had decided to spend his days traveling, the Earth Province, which was the largest province in the whole kingdom, the water provinces, which were at the upper and lower borders of the kingdom, and the air province, which had a single city on land and a mass of floating ships hovering in the atmosphere above the kingdom.

In the fall of the year she leaves the city, they travel endlessly, exhaustingly, trying to get Korra acquainted with the populace and with the problems they face.

Their friendship has matured almost as well as they have; Korra and Bolin always laugh about everything, pranking Mako whenever they can and whenever it's funny (regardless of whether it's appropriate or not), and Mako and Bolin are ever loyal to each other...brothers until the end.

The most indiscernable part of them, the group of three, the dream team, is what is going on between Korra and Mako. They fight all the time, mostly in sparring matches because she has to master firebending and she's almost there, but he'd mastered it at fourteen, two years before, but never gloats, always trying to help her understand why you need a calm mind to bend lightning, what the separation of chi feels like, and for god's sake never to try it when it's raining.

He made her her own set of armor, with Bolin's help, for her fifteenth birthday. The metal wasn't heavy like the uniforms of the metalbending knights, but lithe and light enough for Korra to fight easily. It was made with her in mind.

So, clearly, he has something for her.

Korra, predictably, is too preoccupied to notice much of anything, but based on observation by Tenzin and Lin, the daughter of the great Toph Beifong and leader of the metalbending knights, notice the blush on her cheeks that appears when she watches Mako demonstrate lightning production for at least the fourteenth time on the day she asks him to teach her how to do it.

"Well," Mako says, standing on a cliff overlooking the forest of the kingdom, "If you can't generate the lightning, you can at least learn how to redirect it."

Korra's face lights up easily following her disappointment at being unable to produce it herself, but at least he'll do her the favor of teacher her to deflect it.

"Okay," she says, "hit me."

"That's not how it works, Korra," Mako says, a laugh in his voice giving everything away.

"Why not?"

"What, you want me to shoot lightning at you?" he says, incredulous.

"Yeah, sure, what's the big deal?"

"You're crazy," he says simply.

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Later that year, they are sitting down, eating a huge kill from the forest that Korra took down alongside Naga, Mako looks over at Korra, noticing the way the firelight illuminates her blue eyes before they flash to look at him. He looks away quickly when her eyes meet his, focusing on his food. It doesn't mean anything.

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When Bolin is injured in battle, a sword thrust through the crevice between his shoulder and breast plates, Korra rushes over immediately, dropping her bending stance to take the water she has to heal him. As Mako fights off attackers, allowing her enough time to heal his brother's shoulder, he hears him screaming as the tendons reattach under her glowing hands. If Korra wasn't busy putting everything into healing him, she'd try to comfort him with another hand on his head. Naga's licking will have to do.

It takes Bolin a month and a half to recover fully, but the scar never goes away. He could have gone to Katara to have it erased, but he doesn't.

"I like it," Bolin decides finally. "It makes me look manly."

Korra's immediate laughter, the hearty guffaw she produces at Bolin's comment, prompts Mako to release his own. He realizes, in that moment, that though he's known her for years, nearly seven years of growing up together, he's never noticed how loyal and selfless she was.

That's when the momentary glances start increasing in frequency, and with it, the pace of Mako's heartbeat increases too.

The bonfire gets even bigger.

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IV. power

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Korra's first experience with the Avatar state comes in the midst of battle, when one the enemy soldiers - an Equalist, a knight with his face covered in the cold black metal mined from enemy territories, as she'd been told by Lin - holds a blunt dagger to Mako's neck, pressing the point in so far that it draws blood, and she tastes it on her tongue before she is no longer conscious.

Mako watches as Korra ascends into the air, suddenly able to airbend, finally, at the age of seventeen after eight years of being unable to do it, and realizes that something is wrong. Her eyes are glowing, radiant in the moonlight as she bends all four elements at the attacker, Mako getting free finally. Though the fight is over, and the Equalists have finally fled from Korra's attack, she continues to hover in the Avatar State.

"Bro!" Mako hears Bolin call from behind a tree as Korra grows nearly too high to reach. "Do something!"

Mako walks forward, dodging enormous rocks as they are thrown around in Korra's rage. He looks at her face, noticing the pain there, and the tears that fall from her left eye slowly. He takes her hand.

"Korra!"

She snaps her head down to look at him, slowly descending, her angered face fading, becoming more sad, and she passes out as the glowing lights disappear from her eyes.

Mako smoothes the hair out of her face as she falls quickly to sleep.

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V. untouchable

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Mako had definitely realized it by now...he's got it bad. He looks at his Avatar - the King of his homeland, and his childhood friend, and wonders why he didn't know sooner. He probably did, in a way.

He loves her.

And, of course, it's not just petty child's love. At nineteen, he knows what he's been feeling, and he's felt it for a while. This is what fate feels like.

But what's stopping him isn't her beauty, or her overwhelming passion for life, or her personality.

It's that status.

Mako hasn't been able to get it out of his mind until now...from the stories his mother and father told him when he was very small, it made the almighty Avatar seem like more of a god than a person. Shouldn't she deserve someone who is more worthy? Someone revered? Who could possibly deserve Korra?

He feels like a damned fool. He's a peasant boy, albeit a talented one, as one of the king's personal trusted knights, but she is a deity. She is the Avatar. He's seen her in the Avatar state, and while it was humbling and frightening, it was also amazingly beautiful...made even more so with the knowledge that she would become that furious of over the possibility of _his_ death. Him. The street boy who had lost his parents at eight and had yet to find his way until he found her.

Additionally, Mako sees her as a deity without the Avatar title. She is his best friend in the world, the person he trusts the most aside from his own brother, and even then, Korra and Bolin are nearly tied. She's the most beautiful girl in the whole world, with her long chocolate-colored hair, her blue eyes that spark with both curiosity and sympathy for everyone and everything, and her mouth that challenges him, has spat fire at him more than once, that his wants to kiss so badly that he feels the blood in his veins burning every time she looks his way over the burning of the bonfire...which usually results in it growing to be twice as big, and she smirks at him once it dies back down.

He can't help it.

But she is worth _so_ much, he thinks, and he feels as if he is worth nothing.

So he doesn't say anything.

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VI. threat

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Korra's experience with threats to her kingdom go as far as her many battles with the Equalists, and she has seen their leader on a few occasions. When he bursts in on her city, however, occupying her castle while she's away learning about her own kingdom, she returns without a second thought.

"But Korra," Mako says, echoing Tenzin's earlier protests, "this is too dangerous," he says halfheartedly.

"I do not care," Korra says. "These are my people. I have to protect them."

Mako smiles a little at that. "Okay," he says, reaching his hand out to place it on her shoulder.

"I'll be by your side, though," he asserts.

"Well, yes," she says, surprised it needs to be said.

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In the midst of battle, the eighteen year old Korra realizes that the great leader of this coup, the anti-bending coup, is a bender himself, and attempts to use this knowledge to tell her people not to trust him. Though she is a bender, she is the great incarnation of the world's spirit, and Mako knows she is prepared for this. She was fated for this duty, and he all of a sudden realizes that nobody else alive could do what she is willing to do.

The fighting intensifies when the waterbending Amon paralyzes them in their places, Korra flat against a wall, unable to move. He approaches Mako, and struggles.

When Amon reaches him, he doesn't know what to do. If he loses his bending, he could very well lose Korra. His firebending is what brought them together initially, but he can't move. He struggles.

Korra finally moves, lashing out slowly against Amon's bloodbending.

Mako takes the opportunity, right before Korra crashes to the floor of the courtyard in which they first began training together, to generate the lightning that had been itching in his fingers ever since Amon first bloodbent Korra.

In a single, arcing line, the lightning flows from his fingertips and shakes the villain to his core, leaving him unconscious on the ground.

Mako runs with Korra, away, away, away, until they are outside the palace, and Amon has followed them.

When the bloodbending is focused on Mako, whose limbs begin to twist unnaturally; his wrists, his arms, his neck, his legs, everything in sudden, intense, excruciating pain, Korra's eyes widen, then change, filling with light, glowing as her body crouches and she begins bending everything at once. Mako's body is still twisting as she ascends and with a single movement, earthbends Amon into the ground. One of her predecessors takes control of her body to end Amon. And she makes sure that he can never bloodbend again.

Mako catches her as she collapses, perpetually ready to defend her when she falls.

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VII. finally

Mako stands on the roof of the palace, the one Korra had been in for years with him by her side, both learning how to be great benders and fighters. He looks up at the sky and at the sun sinking below the horizon, its light turning the entire sky hazy hues of orange, red, pink, and purple as it disappears. His arm aches where it had been twisted and bloodbent, and it is in a sling.

He hears the footsteps, but doesn't turn around.

"Hey," she says, and he turns, seeing her bandaged in some areas and beginning to heal. Korra, his king, his Avatar, and the woman he loves, looks happier than he's seen her in a while.

"Hey," he says back, smiling at her.

"How are you doing?" she asks.

"I'm...exhausted," he says honestly, looking back into her blue eyes, the light in them coming from the sun. She's radiating, happy and beautiful, and he can't believe that they're so close. That he was lucky enough to meet this girl.

"Me too," she says, and leans her head heavily on his shoulder. He hesitantly puts his left arm around her, and she pulls in closer.

"You really saved me today," she says, looking down into the stones of the roof.

"You really saved _me_today," he says, trying to emphasize his gratitude to her.

"Aw," she says, embarrassed, her cheeks red, "it was nothing."

"It sure as hell was not nothing," he says, turning her in his arm to look at her in the face. He makes them sit down so that he can look more easily into her eyes.

"What are you doing?" she asks, her face becoming, if it was possible, more heated than ever.

"I just..." Mako looks away, starved for words to express himself. "I don't know how to tell you how grateful I am to you," he says.

Korra looks back in response, eyes wider, imploring him to continue.

"You're amazing, Korra."

"Thanks," she says, not used to hearing those words from him, of all people.

"No, you don't get it," he says, putting his one good hand on her shoulder and leaning in to get his bearings as he tries to talk to her, to get her to understand the way he feels about her.

"You are so talented," he begins, "and so loyal, and selfless, and brave, and unbelievable, and damn hard to deal with sometimes, because you make me better, and I just can't believe that I get to know you," he says.

Korra is riveted to her spot on the roof of the palace, the sun streaming by their faces as he talks.

"And you saved me and Bolin so many times," he says, "I wouldn't be in this world without you. You're...you are incredible."

He stops, unable to talk any more about her, with her sitting here in front of him, her eyes so wide and searching.

He moves to leave after giving her should a soft squeeze, but her hand catches his good arm before he does.

And she kisses him then, hard, though the hardness isn't so much from the softness of her sweet mouth than it is from the intense pressure of her pushing into him, both of her hands resting on either side of his face as she pulls him down into her.

She detaches, pulling away and looking into his golden eyes, the both of them looking for an answer in the eyes of the other.

"I love you," she says, before pressing back into him, kissing him once more, slowly, before sitting back.

Mako stares in disbelief as he looks at this woman, unable to believe that someone like her could ever love him.

"Really, Korra?" he says, his gaze intense on her eyes, on her face. He is filled with so much joy he feels like he may burst with it.

"Since I met you," she says bashfully.

"Me too," he says. "I love you too." They sit there, looking into each other's eyes, and she moves to kiss him again.

"Please marry me," he says suddenly, then realizing what he's said, closes his eyes, wincing a bit.

He doesn't expect her answer.

"Yes," she says, pulling him down to her for another kiss. "Absolutely, yes, yes, yes."

They continue kissing for a long time, Korra's resounding repetition of her agreement to his request repeated over and over and over.

Finally, she pulls away for an extended period, and says, "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"We have to get rid of this castle."

"Deal," he says, pulling her face back to his with his good hand.

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When they take the vows in their beloved city, in their home, it is in the courtyard where they first met, the walls of the palace gone, and nothing but them, their family, and the sky above to witness their union.

Their hands clasped, they agree to be husband and wife, sealing their agreement with a kiss.

But instead of I do, Korra says yes.

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**Wrote this for Makorra week 2012! Theme: fantasy**

**I don't know if you're gonna like this but I liked writing it and I am a little proud of myself. Anyways, it might be three hours late, but I had a lot of work today. So here it is! enjoy!**

**-Ava**


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